


Duty and Sin

by catie_writes_things



Series: better than things dreamed of in the forest [3]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: AU of an AU, Alternate Universe, Angst, Family, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Adultery, Missing Scene, One Shot Collection, Tumblr Prompt, the adultery fic for people who hate adultery fics: alternate takes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:08:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25371394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catie_writes_things/pseuds/catie_writes_things
Summary: Collection of alternate POV scenes and what-if moments based on my fic Sin and Duty, in which Bumi is the product of a secret affair between Zuko and Katara, and there are consequences for that.
Relationships: Aang & Bumi II, Bumi II & Zuko (Avatar), past Katara/Zuko, referenced Aang/Katara
Series: better than things dreamed of in the forest [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1751542
Comments: 7
Kudos: 136





	1. What If - Aang

“Try again, slowly this time,” my father admonished gently. “Remember, firebending is controlled by your breathing.”

I nodded, and did as he asked, stumbling through the beginning of the form with all of my seven-year-old determination. I tried to breath deeply, and exhale as I ended the move with a punch - and was rewarded for my efforts with a little puff of bright yellow flame.

“That was better,” my father said, smiling. But his smile didn’t reach his eyes. Neither had my mother’s, when she had seen me bend. “Now, the next part goes like this…” My father demonstrated once again, and I watched in awe, as always. My father was such a powerful firebender.

The second part of the form proved even harder for me to learn, but my father assured me it would come with practice. “You’re going to be a great firebending master some day, I’m sure,” he said, ruffling my already untidy hair.

“Will I get tattoos like yours when I am?” I asked.

My father’s smile faded, and his hand fell from my head. “No, Bumi,” he said gravely. “Only the airbenders have tattoos.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling disappointed at the answer, and ashamed for having asked. I knew that tone in his voice, the one that meant I had said something that made him unhappy.

My father took me by the hand and led me back towards the house where we had lived for almost a year now, on the island outside of Republic City. I paused on the doorstep, looking out at the sun setting over the bay, golden rays shimmering on the clear blue water.

“Dad,” I said softly. “When’s Mom gonna come back?”

My father stilled, one hand on the door. I looked up and studied his face in profile. His eyes were closed, and the corners of his mouth drawn down. I already regretted asking.

With a sigh, he pushed the door open, and gently guided me inside ahead of him. “Go wash up,” he said, nudging me towards the bathroom. “I’ll have dinner ready soon.”

I obeyed, disappointed again, but not surprised that he hadn’t answered my question. It wasn’t fair, I thought to myself as I watched the water from the washbasin trickle between my fingers. Being a bender was supposed to make my parents proud. It was supposed to make them _happy_.

But ever since that first flame had come to life in my hands, my mother and father had been anything but.


	2. What If - Zuko

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by [izzythehutt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/izzythehutt).

“Do you do this every morning?”

Zuko paused in the kata he was slowly going through and opened his eyes. He hadn’t been aware he had an audience.

“Usually, yes,” he told Katara’s oldest son. “After I finish my meditation.”

The eleven-year-old boy looked up at him, steady, unblinking. He had barely said a word to Zuko since his arrival the day before, unlike his four-year-old sister who had chattered on endlessly about her new dolls. Bumi had only politely thanked him for his own gift, and said not an unprompted word more until his tentative question just now.

Strange, a voice in the back of Zuko’s mind whispered, that any child of Aang’s should be so shy.

“Would you...like to watch?” Zuko offered, to fill the ongoing silence. An awkward question, since Bumi had already been doing just that.

The boy’s eyebrows drew together, worried. “Could I?” 

“Of course,” Zuko said with a nod, and resumed the kata where he had left off, explaining each move for Bumi’s benefit as he went through the familiar routine. The boy watched with rapt attention, eyes tracking Zuko’s every move, and though he didn’t so much as nod in acknowledgment, Zuko could tell he was listening intently, too.

When he finished the kata, he lit a flame in one hand, and held it out towards Bumi. “Firebending, you see, comes from the breath.”

Bumi inhaled sharply, eyes fixed on the dancing flame, and looked as if he were about to say something - but he shut his mouth with a snap and took a step back.

“It’s okay,” Zuko reassured him, reducing the size of the flame slightly. “I won’t let it hurt you.”

“I should see if my mom needs help,” the boy blurted out hastily, and then ran off towards the house.

What an odd child, Zuko thought.

* * *

Bumi was eleven years old. Zuko knew the date of his birth, had known ever since he had received the excited letter from Aang announcing it. And he knew how to count. The possibility had not escaped him.

But it was only a possibility, easy to discount and better forgotten, especially in all those years of silence from Katara. She would know best, he reasoned. If she suspected, she would tell him - and if she did not tell him, she would have her reasons. And as her younger children came, it was easier to accept that she and Aang were happy now, and their family was content, and that was that.

But it was different seeing the boy.

Bumi stuck close to his mother, always helping her with this and that household chore. He doted on his younger siblings, too, indulging his sister in playing with her dolls and minding his baby brother while Katara taught Kya her basic waterbending forms. He was reserved, responsible, and eager to please.

And when he smiled, he looked like Izumi.

Zuko didn’t notice at first, because Bumi never smiled at _him,_ but he did smile often - for his mother, for his siblings, and for Aang. It was a smile Zuko knew well, once he truly looked at it, the same smile that melted his heart every time he saw it on his daughter’s face.

Seeing it on this child instead was unsettling. Still, he told himself, he must be imagining things.

* * *

The day before he was to leave, Zuko woke at dawn as usual. But on his way outside to meditate, as he passed by Bumi’s bedroom, he heard the distinctive muffled sound of a child who was crying and trying very hard to make no noise.

“Bumi?” he called, in a low, cautious voice, one hand already on the boy’s door - it had been left ajar, which was odd, for every other morning Zuko had passed by it had been shut tight. “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” came the shaky reply, and the sound of shifting mattress and bedclothes. Zuko could imagine the boy was frantically drying his eyes.

He hesitated, hand still on the door. If Bumi didn’t want to talk to him, it was none of his business, surely. He should respect the boy’s privacy.

“Would you like to meditate with me?” he called through the crack in the door.

He heard the boy get up and cross the room. The door opened just a bit further, just enough for Zuko to see Bumi appear in the opening. Sure enough, his face had been scrubbed clean, though his eyes were still red, and his hair messier than usual. “Okay,” the boy agreed, his voice barely above a whisper. “But don’t tell my mom.”

As they made their way to the spot on the eastern end of the island that Zuko had been using for meditation, he explained to Bumi the basics of how firebending meditation worked. The boy kept his eyes downcast, but Zuko suspected he was once again listening carefully, even if he was pretending not to. When they sat down side by side, and Zuko lit the candles and began, Bumi certainly fell into synch with him quickly, matching his breathing to Zuko’s own.

Which meant Bumi’s breathing was also in synch with the rise and fall of the candle flames.

His own inner fire connecting to the flames before them, to Agni’s flame rising above the horizon, to the source of all fire, Zuko wondered in spite of himself if there was something connecting him to this boy beside him as well. Katara might have said nothing, and had her reasons, and the boy himself might not even know. But Zuko could not ignore or forget the possibility anymore.

He held his breath, and opened his eyes. The candle flames continued to rise and fall, in perfect time with each inhale and exhale from Bumi, once, twice, three times.

His son’s eyes flew open as he realized what had happened, and the candle flames went dead, leaving only wisps of smoke. He looked up at Zuko with a gasp, afraid.

“Bumi,” Zuko said carefully, reaching out to grasp the boy by the shoulders, as much to stop his own hands from shaking as to comfort him. “Does your mother know you can do this?”

“Don’t tell her you saw,” Bumi pleaded in reply, gripping Zuko’s wrists as his eyes filled with tears again. “Please don’t say anything. I’m not supposed to let anyone know.”

A thousand questions raged in Zuko’s mind - who had given the boy such a preposterous command, and why, and how long he had known he was a firebender, and did he know what that meant. But Bumi was already terrified, and Zuko forced himself to take a moment to rein in his emotions, the anger and guilt and fear of his own. He couldn’t frighten this child - _his son_ \- any further. 

Bumi was his son. Katara had kept the truth from him, and she must have had her reasons, just as he’d always known. But it was one thing to know, and another to see his son trembling with fear before him, tears running down his face, blaming himself for something he had no control over.

“It’s my fault,” Zuko said at last, pulling the boy to his chest. Bumi fell awkwardly into the embrace, clutching at the front of Zuko’s shirt as sobs wracked his body. “Your mother will know that it was my fault.” There would be hard confrontations and bitter recriminations to come, that could not be avoided, and Zuko was not without his own quiet fury at Katara, and at himself. But he would not let a single harsh word be directed at his son for this.

“It’s okay,” he said soothingly, squeezing the boy tighter. “You’re going to be okay.” He pressed his eyes closed, but could not stop his own tears from escaping as he held his son.


	3. POV - Aang

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate POV on a scene from Chapter Four: The Truth.

There were footsteps on the stair, and Aang knew who it was. Really, it would have to be him. It was only right.

“Come here, Bumi,” he said without turning around.

And Bumi did as he was told, coming to stand by the rail a few feet away, like the obedient child he had once been before his adolescent flightiness had set in. Aang had taken it in stride when Bumi refused to be pinned down, content that if his oldest son was not to be an airbender, he could at least still be an Air Nomad in spirit.

But he had never been any of those things, had he?

Bumi was shrinking under his silent stare, reminding Aang even more of when he had been small. But even those fond memories were now tainted, the deception stretching back so many years... “When Kya was born, and you wanted to know if she could earthbend,” Aang said at last, his voice rough. “Did you already know then?”

Bumi hesitated a moment before answering. “I didn’t know...the reason why.” That was diplomatic of him, to put it that way, Aang thought bitterly. “But I’ve been firebending since I was six years old.”

Aang looked away, towards the sunset. “Six years old,” he repeated, anger boiling inside him once again. “She made you lie for her when you were _six.”_ What had she been _thinking,_ how could she have done that to _their son..._

_Her son_ , his own thoughts taunted him. _He was never yours._

“I’m sorry,” Bumi said quietly. Of course he would come to his mother’s defense no matter what. Like father, like son, right?

Aang’s grip on the railing tightened until his hands hurt. “Do not apologize for her.”

“I’m not,” Bumi insisted. “I’m apologizing for myself.”

Aang scoffed at this absurd explanation. “Why?” What had he done, except what he had been told by his mother? What did _he_ think he owed anything to Aang for?

“Because I _did_ hide this from you,” Bumi pointed out, his voice rising. “Because I let her get away with it.” Aang hardly thought anyone could have expected him to do anything different, especially as a child, but Bumi went on before he could object to these reasons. “Because in spite of what I knew, I still wanted you to...”

Aang turned to face him again as his voice trailed off, and saw the boy was fighting tears. He was twenty years old, a man now, and someone else’s son - but still, it was a boy that Aang saw. The boy who had run to his arms every time he returned home, the boy who had sat beside him and learned the ancient prayers of the Air Nomads long before his brother ever began to airbend. “What was it you wanted from me, Bumi?”

And that question finally made Bumi erupt. “You were the one who named me, Dad!” he shouted, nothing pointed or sarcastic about the paternal name. “You were the man I looked up to as a child, the man I wanted to make proud more than anything!” The accusations came one after another. So many years, the deception... “You were the one who should have been there for me!” he concluded his tirade at last.

Aang closed his eyes, and his head bowed under Bumi’s unwitting echo of his mother’s words. If he had only been there, every missed birthday and milestone. If he had only been there when his fire came to life, when she had made him lie... “Do you know what your mother told me,” he said with difficulty, against the weight constricting around his chest. “About the affair?”

“No,” Bumi snapped. The railing shuddered slightly as he leaned his own weight against it.

“She said it wouldn’t have happened...” A stab of guilt struck through his anger and pain, right to his heart. Aang had to pause, take a deep breath, before he could continue. “It wouldn’t have happened if I had been there for her.” He opened his eyes, seeing Bumi staring at him, his whole body taut. “Don’t apologize for wanting me to act like your father,” he told the little boy he had held on the day he was born, the child whose innocent questions he had never understood, the young man whose hidden torment he had failed to see. “I should have, and I’m sorry I didn’t.”

Bumi let out a choked sob, and all but collapsed. Aang let go of the railing, stepped forward, and held his son as he cried.


End file.
